Blogging the Nations at War I

Blogging the Nations at War

The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot
(New York, Leslie-Judge Co., 1917)

When I was seven years old I discovered a 'history book' that my mother owned,  The Nations at War: A Current History by Willis John Abbot. It wasn't an actual history work, but rather the work of a journalist, Willis Abbot, who wrote many popular history works, much the same way Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather might today. He was an engaging author, and his works were profusely illustrated, especially The Nations at War, which had an interesting mix of photographs, commercial illustrations, and paintings gracing its pages. I wish that the artists had been credited for their work, but I can think of no way to discover who they were today.

I've remained fascinated with this work for decades, because it was the closest thing to a 'primary source' that 7 year old me had yet seen.  Abbot published a revised edition of the work in 1914 (maybe a typo in the catalog?), 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918, providing a glimpse of the war through American eyes. The change in tone  as the United States shifted from somewhat disinterested observer to eventual combatant was obvious throughout. So, I've decided to 'blog' the book, go through it chapter by chapter and share some of the images and passages that really impacted me as a child, or that I find particularly interesting from a historical or cultural standpoint today.

The book itself is readily available for purchase at many used book sites, and you can also find lots of pdfs on line. I use this pdf of the 1917 edition, which matches the edition I grew up with and which I still have (though I did have it rebound). I found it through the Open Library catalog entry on the Internet Archive site.

So, right off the bat, the cover is striking!  It really emphasizes that this war felt like a continuation of the 19th century to those observing it, not the opening salvo of the 20th century. It was a real mystery to me as a kid, because I could only identify a few of the obvious states indicated, Germany, Japan, Great Britain, ect.  Most of the nations used flags that I just was not familiar with. I can do a little better now.

The design shows the four Central Powers at the bottom, and the Allied Powers along the sides and the top. The Central Powers are arranged in a circle in the center bottom of the design, starting clockwise from the top: Imperial Germany, Bulgaria, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire.  The Allied Powers were more difficult, also going clockwise, starting from the bottom left, we have Montenegro, Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Serbia. an eclectic set of choices, since several Allied Powers, like Greece, were left out.  The United States entered the war years after they had designed the covered, of course. :)

One of the few color images in the book,
a striking, and picturesque photograph. Page 29.

The introduction is well written and arresting, it begins "FOR YEARS wise men had said that there could be no general European war..." and goes on to explain how international finance, public opinion, international socialism, and the destructiveness of military weapons all were said to prevent a general war, and that all failed.  "One by one the forces which the world had relied upon to avert the calamity of a general war were swept away. The ties of finance, of commerce, of mutual interest, of common humanity, even of a common religion were broken."  It then goes on to make a strong case for a 'league of nations' to prevent such wars in the future, responding to George Washington's statement that, "It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world" with "the world has changed since Washington's day. The old isolation of the United States is ended. Oceans have become highways instead of barriers. The interests of all nations are inextricably interwoven." It feels like this could have been written in 2016 instead of 1916.

The first chapter covers the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, as well as the diplomacy leading up to the war and the relative strengths of the combatants. There is a distinct anti-German bias throughout the book, "The assassination, Austro-Hungary's offended sovereignty, were but pretexts for the which the ruling powers of Germany were determined to force."

Vividly highlighting the anti-German bias of the book, on pages 16-17 Abbot claims that "Almost had the German Emperor paralleled in this twentieth century the situation created nearly two hundred years earlier by his famous progenitor Frederick the Great" and goes on to repeat a famous passage on Frederick:

"On the head of Frederic is all the blood which was shed in a war which raged during many years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood of the column of Fontenoy, the blood of the mountaineers who were slaughtered at Culloden. The evils produced by his wickedness were felt in lands where the name of Prussia was unknown; and, in order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America." (from Thomas B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays,  Volume 2)

The coverage of the assassination is more accurate then one might have expected, with very little of conspiracy theory, Abbott acknowledges the Serbs did it and explains why. Still, the book pretty firmly places the blame on the Germans, though it acknowledges the impact of competing Russian ambitions. But France and Great Britain both get treated fairly gently.  Britain is praised for defending Belgian neutrality and though the French desire to avenge the Franco-Prussian War and Alsace-Lorraine are mentioned, they get relatively short shrift.

A pair of maps illustrating Abbot's argument that German and Russian ambitions were in direct competition. pp 8-9

 I do not consider myself an expert on the causes of World War I, nor am I comfortable assigning blame beyond that I consider direct and incontrovertible - the Serbian terrorists who assassinated the Archduke certainly were primarily to blame, and they achieved their goal, Yugoslavia. Which puts the lie to that oft repeated shibboleth that 'terrorism has never succeeded' because it certainly has.

This photo is one of the reasons I wanted to join
the Boy Scouts as a kid. p18.

If you are interested in a more modern take on the origins of World War I, there is still a decent amount of debate on the causes, many historians assign more of the blame to Germany but not all of them. Look at Holger Herwig and Richard F. Hamilton in The Origins of World War I (2003) and Christopher M. Clark in (2012) The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2012) for somewhat contrasting views.  Barbara W. Tuchman's popular history, The Guns of August (1962), argues for bungling and miscommunication leading to the war.

I always felt sorry for the horses. p19

There is a great deal of discussion comparing the strength of the various nations in 1914, but of course it is a journalist's account during the middle of the conflict.  Many of the pictures in this first chapter introduce the royal leaders, Kaiser Willhelm II, Emperor Francis Joseph, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Czar Nicholas and King George V.  The relative unimportance of these men to decision making during the war is obviously not apparent to the public during the conflict.

Other images really captured my imagination or helped
me get a handle on some of the less glamourous aspects of warfare.  One image, showing British officers drafting horses for the war effort, stuck in my head and always popped to mind as I began to study military history, and thus logistics, seriously in graduate school. So did many images of trains and marshaling yards in the books, and its description of the complicated process of mobilizing mass armies for warfare. The first images highlighting the horrors of war appeared in the first chapter as well.  Not yet photographs, but shocking drawings nonetheless.

I felt even more sorry for the horses after looking at this page. p 23.

I believe that is supposed
to be a Taube. p24.

It had a diagram! p25

Other images grabbed my technical imagination. The Lewis Gun looked like something straight out of Jules Verne, but it was a real, functioning weapon.  The aircraft depicted in this work were even more fantastic looking, even in this first chapter, whether they were the target of a Lewis Gun or just a tail peaking out of a truck transport.

And what kid would not find disappearing gun turrets fascinating?

Pure imagination fuel! p25.

But this last image really highlighted, for me, the oddness of 1914, and so i close out this first Blogging the Nations at War entry with it.  The Belgian infantry and their formation simply look like they are straight out of another time, and not really ready, brave as they might be, to face the storm of steel and fire that the 20th century is sending their way.

Top hats and bayonet swords... my son is trying to get into historical reenacting.
I kind of want to do an impression of Belgian infantry 1914.  There cannot be many who reenact them! p19

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Elric & Corum, Eternal Champions

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #118 (August, 2006).

Michael Moorcock is best known for his albino warrior-mage prince, Elric of Melniboné. A mystical anti-hero with a powerful sword and a bizarre appearance, Elric was very much the Drizzt Do-Urden of the Seventies. Of course, Moorcock’s influence on fantasy goes far beyond the creation of one albino brooder. He began editing and writing fantasy and science fiction while still in his teens, and eventually became the editor of New Worlds, a British magazine very similar originally to America’s Astounding Science Fiction or the earlier Weird Tales. As the editor, Moorcock was a founding father of the ‘New Wave’ movement, a movement dedicated to introducing politics and leftist social theory to science fiction while creating controversial, literary works.

Moorcock’s fantasy writing had a deep impact on early role-playing. Elric’s sword, Stormbringer, was infamous for being the perhaps the single most powerful magic item in the original Deities & Demigods, its legend grew when later printings of that book removed the Melnibonean and Cthulhu mythos for legal reasons. Moorcock’s concept of a ‘Multiverse’ of different planes was obviously influential in early AD&D concepts of the planes, especially early concepts such as the ‘wheel’ diagram in the back of the 1st edition AD&D Player’s Handbook. [edit: Listen to Moorcock himself talk about his concept of the Multiverse and the Eternal Champion, and why he prefers fantasy to science fiction, here.]

Arioch! Arioch! Blood and souls for my lord Arioch!

Perhaps his most important contribution to role-playing, however, is the idea of Law and Chaos as primary ethical identities. In Moorcock’s stories Good and Evil essentially do not exist, rather there is only Law and Chaos. The Eternal Champion, the protagonists (in varied forms) of all Moorcock’s writings, is torn between these two primordial forces as he tries to force balance between the two. Elric of Melniboné is the best known version of the Eternal Champions, but Moorcock has explored the idea thoroughly with other versions.

Elric of Melniboné's tales first appeared in the 1960s in Science Fantasy, a British genre magazine, in a series of novelettes and novellas.  Later, Moorcock collected, expanded, and reedited the tales into the six works that introduced Elric to American fandom in the 1970s: Elric of Melniboné, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate,The Weird of the White Wolf, The Sleeping Sorceress, The Bane of the Black Sword, and Stormbringer.  These six tales presented a relatively coherent, contained story. Elric was both pastiche and rejection of Howard's Conan, where Conan was strong, healthy, and barbaric, Elric was weak, sickly, and civilized.  Conan was a warrior whose virtue was proven by his physical prowess while Elric was a wizard who denied having virtue at all. Teen-age Sword & Sorcery fans loved Elric, however, more easily identifying with the angst-driven anti-hero, perhaps, then the alpha-male Conan. In the 1980s, Ace Books reprinted the series with evocative covers by Robert Gould. As myriad young AD&D players discovered Elric through the 1st edition Dungeon Master Guide's famous Appendix N or the 1st printing of Deities & Demigods and swarmed mall bookstores looking for Elric works, the stylized covers further cemented Elric's status with fantasy fandom.

Moorcock later returned to his most popular character with a series of novels,  The Fortress of the Pearl (1989), The Revenge of the Rose (1991), The Dreamthief's Daughter (2001), The Skrayling Tree (2003), and The White Wolf's Son (2005).  These novels focused generally on Elric and the Eternal Champion concept, often having a distinctly different feel then his earlier Elric works.

Elric is the last emperor of Melniboné, a sickly albino who rules an ancient empire in its final decadent days long after its glories have passed, as the human Young Kingdoms surge forward to take its place.  Melnibonéans are immoral, devoted to the gods of Chaos and strong in magic, defended by their alliance with ancient dragons. Elric's cousin, Yrkoon, a 'proper' Melnibonéan sought to over throw him, a conflict characterized by Elric's own ambivalence, poor decisions, and the acquisition of the legendary Chaos swords, Stormbringer and Mournblade (wielded, briefly, by his cousin Yyrkoon against him). Elric is aided intermittently in the quest by Arioch, one of the Chaos lords, who is clearly no one that should be trusted.  But he allows Elric to gain Stormbringer, and Stormbringer saddles Elric with a curse, the blade devours the souls of its victims and feeds that power to Elric, allowing him to forgo the sorcerous drugs he normally requires to maintain his strength. But the perverse blade seems to prefer to devour Elric's friends and lovers whenever possible this becomes the central theme of the series and is amply described in the novels and short stories. 

The sword, which is a metaphor for addiction. The symbiosis between man and sword is the most distinctive and iconic aspect of the Elric tales, it is later sung of in the Blue Öyster Cult song, "Black Blade." 

It had been a few decades since I read the Elric books, and I am afraid they remained as angsty and juvenile as I remembered. I prefer the middle four original novels, as their episodic nature hearkens back to the Sword and Sorcery tales Moorcock was deconstructing. Moorcock's world-building is too weak to provide a proper foundation for the society of Melniboné itself and the first novel especially suffers greatly as a result.  Nonetheless, the series contains some excellent concepts and scenes scattered throughout.

Moorcock is also known as the author of 'Epic Pooh', a 1978 review essay on the field of epic fantasy which famously compared C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien's work to A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh tales.  As a critical essay of fantasy literature the article is rather basic and marred by Moorcock's personal biases, especially his views of Great Britain as an imperial power. In light of the essay, it is easy to see how he intends decadent, corrupt Melniboné as criticism of his native Great Britain - an island empire albeit one where superior magic replaces superior technology as it conquers and exploits more primitive continental nations. Despite his later reaction to Tolkien and Lewis, however, the essay "The Secret Life of Elric of Melniboné" makes it clear that Poul Anderson and R.E. Howard are Elric's direct inspirations.

Prince Corum Jhaelen Irsei is the Eternal Champion in two of Moorcock’s trilogies, though these short novels can also be found compiled into very readable omnibus editions. The Knight of Swords (1971), The Queen of Swords (1971), and The King of Swords (1971) were released individually and in two collections as The Swords Trilogy and Corum: The Coming of Chaos. The Bull and the Spear (1973), The Oak and the Ram (1973), and The Sword and the Stallion (1974) have been released in two collections as well, The Chronicles of Corum and The Prince with the Silver Hand.

"'If they valued what they stole, if they knew what they were destroying,' says the old Vadhagh in the story, The Only Autumn Flower, 'Then I would be consoled.'"  

Corum is a member of the Vadhagh, an ancient race of elf-like beings that barely notices its own destruction at the hands of the Gods of Chaos and their agents, the Mabden (humans). Though they nurse a hatred for the similar Nhadragh, the Vadhagh spend their time in philosophical and artistic pursuits, isolated from one another and unaware as one by one their widely separated homes are destroyed. An urbane, educated, wry hero, Corum is a far cry from Elric, though equally given to brooding. He is the last of his race, and thinks in many ways more like the Mabden than the Vadhagh. Like Elric, he suffers tragedy, in his case a maiming at the hands of Mabden torturers. This allows him to use two great magical artifacts, the Eye of Rhynn and the Hand of Kwll. Possibly the original templates for the Hand and Eye of Vecna of AD&D fame, these artifacts provide him great power at a great cost.

The first trilogy depicts Corum’s attempts to revenge the destruction of his people, and to free the Fifteen Planes from the gods of Chaos, including a grotesque avatar of Elric’s patron deity, Arioch. The second trilogy, set long after the first, is heavily influenced by Celtic mythology. Corum witnesses the slow transformation of his world into Earth, or at least an alternate Earth, and readers see that his story, and the history of his race, is the original inspiration for the legendary sidhe. This transformation is framed within a struggle against the Fhoi Myore, the Cold Gods, who represent the ancient Celtic myths of the Fomorians.

(This blog includes an excellent description of the first Corum trilogy and the world it is within.)

Both heroes represent the same message: a theological attack on the possibility of gods and a narrative argument for radical atheism. Moorcock’s writing is mannered, erudite, and self-conscious; he fits firmly within the world of the radical social movements of the Sixties when the personal was political and the political was theological. Law appears somewhat less reprehensible than Chaos in his milieu, but rebellion is his preferred dogma. His clear prose is heavily influenced by poetry and his descriptions of the other-worldly are vivid and surrealistic.

The mood of the Corum stories is often as melancholic as Moorcock’s other works, and yet Corum is granted long periods of true happiness. This serves to make his later losses more poignant, and allows a glimmer of warmth and light into Moorcock’s otherwise bleak, beautiful multiverse. This can reinforce the theme of corruption, as Corum’s sorrows are caused by nature and his greatest foes are no more than various aware agents of impersonal universal forces. Corum’s natural immortality ultimately causes him as much sorrow as his unnatural maiming. The conclusion is also a beginning, and less nihilistic than most of Moorcock’s other writings.

Still, it is telling that Moorcock returned to write more and more on Elric, yet seldom revisited Corum.

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Thoughts on The Good Place

The Last Judgment (Michelangelo, 1536–1541)

I recently read a couple decent but contrasting reviews of The Good Place, one on Slate ("The Good Place Went Out on Its Own Terms") and the other on The Mockingbird ("The Despairing Place"). The conclusions were predictable (predictability is going to be a running theme here). Secular, humanist Slate loved it, religious, humanist Mockingbird disliked it. It was interesting that both loved the show over all, and that both loved the penultimate episode.

Anyway, considering these reviews caused me to start typing a Facebook post, and when that post reached 6 paragraphs I realized this was a good writing exercise, and that it should be a blog entry.  (one problem with my blog has been that I keep relegating it to 'finished' pieces or topics that I have little emotional investment in. I need to start taking some bigger swings on this thing).

Back on topic... I know opinions like this are why many people find me insufferable but really, from the beginning there was no other way for The Good Place to end. Either the theologians or the philosophers were bound to be disappointed in the ending. A sitcom with this premise cannot have a satisfying ending, because it is asking questions that we, as a species, have never found satisfying answers for.  That's why I never really watched it, though it seemed tailor made for me.

Now, that doesn't mean I agree with the author of "The Despairing Place". The tone of a theological review of a show about philosophy on a theological website could be predicted as easily as the possible finales for The Good Place.

Which, again, is the point.  Neither philosophy nor theology have given us flawless answers to why we are here, where it all comes from, or what comes next, or even if there is a next. No, atheists haven't answered those either, they just gave up asking the questions, the quitters. 😉 The article is correct, despite the flights of special effects whimsy the show was never able to transcend the limits of our imaginations.  Heaven & Hell simply looked, and acted, like fun house mirror images of material reality. Understandable, as it's all we have as a conceptual framework.

But these places are meaningless unless they transcend material existence.  I'm not certain it is truly possible for us to imagine beyond reality. Heck, we have a hard time imagining 'places' within reality that are not 3 dimensional. Was The Good Place functionally different from cinematic depictions of cyberspace, such as The Matrix or Ready Player One? We've been trying to imagine these different places in reality a long time, try reading Abbot's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884) sometime and then consider if the tale, in your mind's eye, really is 2 dimensional. Heck, not even The Simpson's 3-D Halloween episode could really extend our abilities to perceive meaningfully beyond our material framework. Or Homer's material framework, anyway.

And we don't do much better on the questions themselves, ignoring the conceptual framework. No matter how often we try, our answers always come back to oblivion or some sort of god. Even when we try to imagine 'scientific' answers it invariably leads to the same places. I put quotes around 'scientific' because science itself doesn't have anything to do with the big questions asked by philosophy or theology, it's just our best intellectual tool for understanding material existence itself, and therefore is pretty worthless when we try to leave reality behind. But regardless, boiling away the decorations on the many different answers we've tried to come up with for these big questions it is always there is nothing, or there is 'god'. And we end up right back where we started asking the questions.

It was brave of a sitcom to try to answers these questions, I suppose. And like all good art, the show taught us plenty about humans, our ethics, our strengths, and our weaknesses.  Even the handful of episodes I watched over the years showed it was funny and clever with a great cast. Great art, in my view, always says something truthful about humanity. The Good Place did that, even if it never answered the bigger questions that premise promised answers to.

Now, time to sleep, wondering how embaressed I'll be by this blog post in the morning... 😀

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

What I read in 2019

Last year, a friend of mine posted a list of the books they read in 2018, I thought it was a great idea so I posted a list myself on Facebook.  This year I'm posting the list here, since I find this a very useful exercise in self-reflection. What I am reading often impacts my mood, but it also reflects my mood.

Looking over this year's list (see below, these trends stood out:

# of Rereads: 48
# by or about Inklings: 13
# by Joseph Delaney: 10
# Dragonlance: 3 (or 5?)
# Thieves World: 10
# by Jim Butcher: 20

I often reread books, I find it useful for getting the most from a work.  The % of rereads was very high this year, because I reread several favorite series that I haven't looked at in some years, the Dresden Files, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and the Wardstone Chronicles. I also started rereading the Thieves' World anthologies and novels, but that is in the way of research as I've been putting together a comprehensive chronology of that series. I'm about a third of the way through it.
I expanded from my ongoing study of Tolkien to looking fore closely at other members of the Inklings, especially C.S. Lewis.  I read several of his works that I hadn't read before, one of which, 'Til We have Faces, was truly exceptional.

It is very rare that I refuse to finish a book, but it happened this year; Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons by Jeffro Johnson. It was not only inaccurate in its take on the various books listed in Appendix N of the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide, it was hateful and just poorly done.

I also managed to publish two books and two articles of my own last year.  The articles were on Operation Mountain Storm for Landpower in the Long War: Projecting Force After 9/11 and "Historiography for Marines" published in the November 2019 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette. The books were The Legacy of American Naval Power: Reinvigorating Maritime Strategic Thought, An Anthology (pdf here) and The United States Marine Corps: The Expeditionary Force at War. I also co-authored the concluding essay in Dr Breanne Robertson's excellent Investigating Iwo (pdf here).

For next year, I'd like a few more original reads, and just more reading in general. I'll definitely finish rereading Thieves' World, and more of the Otto Prohaska novels by Biggins. I'd also like to reread some Plato, it has been a long time. I'll certainly read more Tolkien. Otherwise, it will be fascinating to see where the literary year takes me.

What I read in 2019:

71. Andrew Offut, Swords Against Darkness III
70. Asprin & Abbey, The Dead of Winter
69. Jean Shepherd, A Christmas Story
68. Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
67. JRR Tolkien, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
66. JRR Tolkien, The Children of Hurin
65. Charles Dicken, A Christmas Carol
64. JRR Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas
63. JRR Tolkien, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
62. Benjamin Armstrong, Small Boats and Daring Men
61. John Biggin, The Emperor's Coloured Coat
60. Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked this way Comes
59. Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
58. Bram Stoker, Dracula
57. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch
56. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Curse of the Bane
55. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Night of the Soul Stealer
54. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Attack of the Fiend
53. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Wrath of the Bloodeye
52. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Clash of the Demons
51. Joseph Delaney, The Last Apprentice: Fury of the Seventh Son
50. Joseph Delaney, Spook's: A New Darkness
49. Joseph Delaney, Spook's: The Dark Army
48. Joseph Delaney, Spook's: The Dark Assassin
47. C.S. Lewis, Til We Have Faces

46. C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair
45. C.S. Lewis, The Horse and his Boy
44. C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
43. C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
42. Alistair MacLean, Guns of Navarone
41. Alistair MacLean, Force 10 from Navarone
40. C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
39. Beatrice G Heuser & Athena S Leoussi, Famous Battles and How They Shaped the Modern World
38. Michael Palmer, Stoddert’s War: Naval Operations during the Quasi-War with France, 1798-1801
37. J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien, The Fall of Gondolin
36. Philip Zaleski & Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
35. Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Their Friends
34. Janet Morris, Beyond Wizardwall 
33. Janet Morris, Beyond the Veil
32. Janet Morris, Beyond Sanctuary
31. Asprin & Abbey, Wings of Omen - Kindle version.
30. Asprin & Abbey, The Face of Chaos - Kindle version.
29. Asprin & Abbey, Storm Season - Kindle version.
28. Asprin & Abbey, Shadows of Sanctuary - Kindle version.
27. Asprin & Abbey, Tales from the Vulgar Unicorn - Kindle version.
26. Asprin & Abbey, Thieves' World - Kindle version.
25. Margret Weis & Tracey Hickman, The Annotated Chronicles (Dragonlance Chronicles) (really 3 books)
24. Jim Butcher, Storm Front
23. Jim Butcher, Fool Moon
22. Jim Butcher, Grave Peril
21. Jim Butcher, Summer Knight
20. Jim Butcher, Death Masks
19. Jim Butcher, Blood Rites
18. Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
17. Jim Butcher, Proven Guilty
16. Jim Butcher, White Night
15. Jim Butcher, Small Favor
14. Jim Butcher, Turn Coat
13. Jim Butcher, Changes
12. Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
11. Jim Butcher, Cold Days
10. Jim Butcher, Skin Game
9. Jim Butcher, Side Jobs

8. Jim Butcher, Brief Cases
7. Margret Weis & Tracey Hickman, Dragons of the Highlord Skies: The Lost Chronicles, Volume II
6. George S. Brooks, James Durant: An Able Seaman of 1812
5. Lacey & Brunner, Ortiz: To Live a Man's Life
4. Theodore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812
3.Jame Haley, A Darker Sea: Master Commandant Putnam and the War of 1812
2. Margret Weis & Tracey Hickman, Dragons of the Dwarven Depths
1. Jame Haley, The Shores of Tripoli: Lieutenant Putnam and the Barbary Pirates

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

The Wardstone Chronicles review

The WardstoneChronicles   By Joseph Delaney

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #139 (May, 2008).

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

I’m always searching for my next fantasy ‘hit,’ that elusive series that grabs hold of my imagination and simply won’t let go. I long to be engulfed in the story and compelled to consume it as a man dying of thirst consumes water. Such fantasy works are few and far between, sadly, and lesser fare leaves the mental palate dry and unsatisfied. But in 2005 I found a series that fulfilled every bit of that over-heated metaphor and then some. At least, the first few books in the series filled that need.

The cover first caught my attention as I was following my kids through a chain bookstore’s children’s section. It was menacing and out of place, displaying a grizzled old man in hooded cloak carrying a staff and lantern through a graveyard. I had to pick it up, though I expected the book could never live up to that cover image. But inside The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch I found mature, evocative prose and elegant pacing. The book surpassed its cover.

I dwell on the cover because the series title and cover involve some minor controversy, reminiscent of the brouhaha over Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone vice Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Joseph Delany’s fine series originated in Britain, where the series is known as The Wardstone Chronicles, with titles like The Spook's Apprentice, The Spook's Curse, The Spook's Secret, and The Spook's Battle. In the United States the series is titled The Last Apprentice and the same four books are Revenge of the Witch, Curse of the Bane, Night of the Soul Stealer, and Attack of the Fiend. The British books have more minimalist covers, simply a stylized cloaked spook with staff, lacking background or detail.

Regardless of the title, the inside of each book is filled with the same powerful prose describing the world of the Spook, John Gregory, and his apprentice, Tom Ward. They live in ‘The County,’ which is heavily based on Lancashire in England during the 1700s. The Spook is trained to deal with the supernatural, the ‘Dark,’ preventing haunts and witches from disturbing the living. It is an often thankless job, as the Spook is shunned by the superstitious county folk he aids, and persecuted by the Church.

The Spook is a hard man in many ways, but extremely knowledgeable and kind when possible. He has been fighting a lonely, losing struggle against the Dark for many years and it shows; despite this he clearly comes to care for his apprentice. Spooks are always seventh sons of seventh sons and usually possess the Sight, a sort of supernatural sensitivity. They wield knowledge against the Dark, knowing the weaknesses of the various creatures and employing seemingly common items such as salt, iron, and earth to “sort out” supernatural dangers.

The creatures of the Dark are wonderful takes on traditional horrors: witches, boggarts, wraiths, ghosts, ghasts, necromancers, and even ancient gods. The evil of these creatures is real and often gruesome. Witches utilize blood or bone magic, eat children, and generally act in the best fairy tale tradition, for example. Yet Delaney manages to introduce a touch of grey into this black and white world, often in the person of Alice, a girl of questionable background who is Tom Ward’s friend.

For gamers the books are filled with wonderful details to fill any supernatural or gothic campaign; they are especially well suited to the old Ravenloft campaign setting in tone and effect. The American versions, at least, contain chapters after the conclusion called Tom Ward’s Secret’s for Survival,  facsimiles of the notebooks Tom fills with entries on the supernatural. These include sketch maps, drawings, and basic entries. An enterprising gamemaster could even copy these pages and give them to players as a game aid, representing a found tome on supernatural lore.

The series really should be read in order. Each volume stands alone well enough, but there is an over-arching plot to the series and read in order the books reveal this plot piece by piece. The books are marketed as children’s books though the prose is adult. That is not to say it is profane or obscene, rather it deals with serious subjects in a serious, dignified way. The early books are as good as the Harry Potter series but somewhat darker, lacking the Potter series’ signature comedic touches and whimsy.

Unfortunately, starting with the sixth book in the series, Clash of Demons, the plots began to go off the rails. The story lines became less believable, and the protagonists are placed in hopeless situations over and over, from which they escape due to decreasingly believable deus ex machina. The books also leave the County, heading to Greece, Ireland, the isle of Mona, Wales, et cetera.

Some of the later books are quite good, Grimalkin the Witch Assassin and I am Alice are particular standouts as they focus on two of the most fascinating characters of the series. But overall, the stories leave the wonderful atmosphere and sense of place that made Revenge of the Witch such a pleasure to read. The final book in the series, Fury of the Seventh Son, is simply a disappointment. There is an attempt to finally get back to the relationship between Tom and the Spook, and the early chapters seem to build towards a satisfying conclusion but then the weight of the plot just tears the characterization to threads, and the ending is just … dull. Alice and Tom’s relationship goes in an unexpected and extremely unbelievable direction for no discernible reason. And though this is supposed to be the conclusion of the series, it leaves far too many threads open.

It was rather heart-breaking to see a book series end so poorly after such a promising start.

The first book in the series was made into a film, Seventh Son, which came out in 2014. Aside from character names, the film had little resemblance to the series or its world and was simply a standard Hollywood take on a fantasy movie. It received poor reviews, but I never saw it. I had been intrigued when I heard Tim Burton might direct – Sleepy Hollow could work in the Spook’s world – but when the film finally appeared, the previews made it very clear that it was not going to be anything like the books, just as The Seeker in 2007 was nothing like The Dark is Rising.

The movie was a failure, but there are also a series of short story anthologies that are generally very enjoyable and worth the read. Less enjoyable is the successor series, The Starblade Chronicles. This series is the true conclusion of The Wardstone Chronicles and is thankfully only three volumes long. It introduces a new character, Jenny, who Tom takes on as the first female spook apprentice, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. But after another intriguing start, she is shoved aside and ignored in the later stories. In this series the antagonists are some sort of northern creature whose inspiration I cannot discern (the author has told me they are an original creation) and they draw the series from the sort of historical horror of the earliest novels into the nonsensical generic fantasy of the film. I can’t recommend these later books, unless one is simply looking for disjointed gaming examples. The potential of a better series is there, but the author seems to always choke with the endings.

I understand that some further books are coming out. I will probably try them, because an author with this much talent can always bounce back.

Either way, the Wardstone Chronicles does deserve to be explored, and gamemasters running horror games of any sort (Ravenloft or some sort of Victorian horror especially) will find all sorts of ideas and inspirations.



All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

Thieves' World!

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #115 (May, 2006).

"You're in the wrong place, sucker."
-Robert Asprin's caption for the cover,
according to Andrew Offut,
"Afterword", The Dead of Winter (1985)

"...whenever one set out to write heroic fantasy, it was first necessary to re -invent the universe from scratch regardless of what had gone before. Despite the carefully crafted Hyborean world of Howard or even the delightfully complex town of Lankhmar which Leiber created, every author was expected to beat his head against the writing table and devise a world of his own. Imagine, I proposed, if our favourite sword-and -sorcery characters shared the same settings and time -frames. Imagine the story potentials. Imagine the tie-ins. 

What if...

What if Fafhrd and Mouser had just finished a successful heist. With an angry crowd on their heels, they pull one of their notorious doubleback escapes and elude the pursuing throng. Now suppose this angry, torch-waving pack runs headlong into Conan, hot and tired from the trail, his dead horse a day's walk behind him. All he wants is a jug of wine and a wench. Instead, he's confronted with a lynch mob. What if his saddlebags are full of loot from one of his own ventures, yet undiscovered?

Or what if Kane and Elric took jobs marshalling opposite armies in the same war?"
(from "The Making of Thieves' World", Thieves' World (1979))

               Thieves’ World began in 1979 as an authorial experiment.  While Robert Asprin, Lynn Abbey, and Gordon Dickson were having dinner at Boskone ’78 they discussed one of the central difficulties of fantasy writing: world building.  Creating a world was a difficult and time-consuming task, and once finished the world only existed as a playground for its creator.  But if authors could share a world, if they could develop it together and set stories within it, the possibilities were staggering.  Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey turned the idea into a reality, and the gritty, realistic town of Sanctuary was born.  
               In its first incarnation it would eventually include 12 short story anthologies, 5 'official' novels, 7 graphic novels, a classic role-playing boxed set produced by Chaosium, and 6 roleplaying books published by Chaosium and FASA. there was even a board game, Sanctuary: Thieves World (Mayfair Games, 1982)  Over two-dozen authors would send their characters scurrying through Sanctuary’s slum, including well-known writers such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, C.J. Cherryh, Phillip Jośe Farmer, and Andrew Offutt.

               With so much material, trying to describe all of Thieves’ World would be an impossible task.  The short story anthologies form the heart of the franchise, each with eight to ten stories by half a dozen or so authors.  Despite the diversity of talent, Thieves’ World remained remarkably consistent in tone and style.  It was gritty, robust, occasionally depressing, realistic fiction set within a fantastic world of magic, gods, and demons.   

The heroic motifs of traditional sword and sorcery were well represented, Sanctuary boasted powerful swordsmen, skilled thieves, and amoral witches and wizards.  Gods stalked the streets on occasion, and the dead rarely stayed put.  But what set Thieves’ World apart were the other characters, the mid-wives, physicians, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, and limners who lived routine, day to day lives in the city, yet occasionally had odd, exhilarating adventures.  We saw how the Prince lived in his palace, but we also visited with the down trodden of the Downwind slum and the working class folk of the Maze.  It was a wonderful model of a living, breathing fantasy city.  

Thieves’ World was especially interesting in its handling of mature themes and subjects.  Various stories explored difficult topics such as prostitution, rape, sodomy, slavery, sado-masochism, and drug use in a thoughtful, careful manner.  The imagery was neither salacious nor overly graphic; it was enough to indicate an act had occurred with out romanticizing it with descriptive prose.  Stories like John Brunner’s “Sentences of Death” (TW#1), David Drake’s “Goddess” (TW#2), and Robin Wayne Bailey’s “The Promise of Heaven” (TW#11) delivered hefty emotional impact as a result.

               Some of those involved have described the Thieves’ World experience as ‘role-playing for writers’ because the nature of the shared universe forced them to negotiate plots and outcomes with each other and the editors.  This framework makes the series particularly useful for role-players looking for inspiration and source material: “Shadowspawn”(TW#1) by Andrew Offutt provides the best character study in modern fantasy fiction, and an excellent example for role-players seeking to construct a believable, memorable character.  Phillip Jośe Farmers’ “Spiders of the Purple Mage” (TW#2) and David Drake’s “Goddess” (TW#2) both feature intricate dungeon crawls.  Andrew Offutt’s “Rebels Aren’t Born in Palaces” (TW#6) is a textbook description of a difficult burglary, while Diane Duane’s “The Hand that Feeds You” (TW#6) illustrates the process and danger of ritual, priestly magic.

               A consistent strength of Thieves’ World was the town’s politics.  Sanctuary suffered under an excess of powers: god-pledged Sacred Band mercenaries struggled against wizard-ruled Nisibisi terrorists, native Ilsig revolutionaries, and the criminal Hawkmasks of Jubal the Slaver.  They were ineffectually policed in their rampages by the town guard, the Imperial ‘Hell-hounds’, and a young, idealistic prince.  The town suffered invasion from the sea, and an epidemic of undead while much of it was flooding.  Any single volume of Thieves’ World should provide enough inspiration for a year of city-based adventures.

               Any short story collection is bound to have the occasional story a reader doesn’t enjoy and Thieves’ World was not an exception, though such stories were remarkably few.  As the series progressed it began to bow beneath the weight of its own plotlines, requiring an extra volume, Soul of the City (TW#8), in 1986 in which three of the authors, Lynn Abbey, Janet Morris, and C.J. Cherryh, wrote all of the stories in order to bring the series back into balance.  That volume read like novel rather than an anthology, and pushed the series back to its anthology roots. 
               The Thieves' World Complete Sanctuary Adventure Pack (1981), the Chaosium boxed set was exceedingly well received, it won the Origins Award for "Best Roleplaying Adventure of 1981." Even 32 years later, John O'Neill of Blackgate Magazine was singing the boxed set's praises. 

               The original Thieves’ World series ended in 1989 with Stealer’s Sky, the twelfth anthology.  The end came somewhat abruptly, leaving fans with several unfinished storylines.  
               Lynn Abbey revived the series in 2002 with the publication of the novel Sanctuary by Tor; set decades after the first series it brought old storylines to a close and introduced new horrors and pathos into the city’s history. She followed that excellent novel with two new anthologies, Turning Points (2002) and Enemies of Fortune (2004) that easily live up to the standards of Thieves’ World.  The new series brought back favorite authors like Robin Wayne Bailey, Andrew Offut, and Diana Paxson, most of whom brought in new characters tied to their past protagonists in some way, but there were also new authors like Jeff Grubb and Dennis L. McKiernan who brought new ideas and characters to the setting. 
               Green Ronin also worked closely with Lynn Abbey to create a Thieves’ World d20 game, detailing both the Sanctuary of both the original series and the new.  They produced the Thieves' World Player's Manual (2005), Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary (2005), Thieves' World Gazetteer (2005), and two excellent adventure modules, Murder at the Vulgar Unicorn (2005) and Black Snake Dawn (2007).
                Some of the Thieves' World  authors took the characters out of the town and into their own worlds, producing works that were not part of the 'official' Thieves' World universe but were still connected to it. Poul Anderson had actually first introduced Cappen Varra in "The Valor of Cappen Varra" in 1957 in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, decades before the series was created.  Marion Zimmer Bradley only contributed to the first anthology, but she later released an anthology with Vonda McIntyre, Lythande (1986) combing their Thieves' World stories with other tales of the Blue Star sorceress. Aside from the 3 'official' Thieves World novels she wrote, Janet Morris and Chris Morris continued the saga of the immortal Tempus and his Stepsons in 8 additional novels (I review these in a later post). One of those novels, The Sacred Band (2010) is set in Sanctuary itself in the decades between the original and the revived anthology series.
                For over 40 years Thieves' World as been a vibrant, fascinating fantasy setting. I can't recommend it enough to new readers. It was a dark and gritty setting long before the current wave of 'dark' fantasy fare took over the media landscape - it paved the way for works like Babylon 5 and Game of Thrones. It was often inspired by actual history but never enslaved to it. So grab a seat at the Vulgar Unicorn, grab a pint, and toss Hakiem a silver to hear a tale...

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.

The Dresden Files

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #137 (March, 2008).

“My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. ”   

Imagine a young Merlin working as a private investigator in modern day Chicago. That, in a nutshell, is the Dresden Files. The series is ‘supernatural noir’ of the sort which became very popular in the 1990s, evoking comparison with television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, comics' John Constantine, or Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake novels.  The genre melds the noir detective story with iconic fantasy or horror fiction concepts such as vampires, werewolves, and magic.  Butcher’s novels firmly fit the genre, but they have their own unique feel so that they add to the genre rather than simply drawing from it.

Much like its literary fore-father, detective fiction, supernatural noir is distinguished by the strength of its main characters.  The stories are episodic and work best if the ‘detective’ who links each tale to the next is someone the reader wishes to spend time with.  They may not be likeable, indeed Sherlock Holmes became the most successful literary character to date by being quite unlikable, but they must be fascinating.  Harry Dresden is both fascinating and likable.  He is a powerful, but young wizard, skilled enough that his unusual escapes and triumphs are quite believable yet vulnerable enough that each encounter feels like a true threat. He is especially attractive as someone the 'nerd' audience can identify with, he was bullied while young, is an outsider, and drops geek references constantly. 

What sets Dresden apart from similar heroes like John Constantine or Anita Blake is his inherent decency.  Dresden is at heart a good guy, with a refreshingly mid-west morality, so John Constantine’s amorality and the sexual politics of Anita Blake are absent.  He feels protective about the weak, doesn’t jump in the sack every few pages, and is essentially honest.  Paired with that decency is a far less cynical view of the Catholic Church than one usually finds in this genre.  One of the later characters, Michael Carpenter, is one of the best examples of a ‘holy knight’ or paladin that one will find anywhere in literature.

The series is currently up to fifteen novels, a pair of short story collections, ten graphic novels, a roleplaying game, and a single season television series (there are rumors of new television series in the works).  I have read all of the novels but the most recent, Skin Game.  The early books follow a basic formula where Harry is investigating some sort of supernatural crime, or several such crimes (which turn out later to be connected).  As he more closely investigates the crime he runs into complications from Chicago’s other supernatural inhabitants and faces greater danger to himself and those he cares about.  This leads ultimately to a climax involving magical conflict.  Things are then set generally right, but complications and loose ends leave room for future plot developments. Formulaic, but like detective fiction, Supernatural Noir thrives on formula and the Dresden Files are no exception. 

Later books break from this formula as the 'through plot' becomes more prominent. There are several of these, the surface plot involves a supernatural war between wizards and vampires, which is eventually resolved in Changes, but revealing itself through the novels is a deeper plot that seems to tie the series into most of fantasy, horror, and mythology.  

The spice of the story is usually provided by the crime and the villain, Butcher’s villains are usually quite powerful, but do seem to lack the sheer verve of a grand villain such as Doyle’s Moriarty.  But they serve to highlight Dresden’s personal strengths and weaknesses. Though several are recurring, for myself none are particularly memorable.

The recurring supporting cast is far more memorable, ranging from Detective Karin Murphy, charged with investigating Chicago’s more unusual crimes to ‘Bob’, a bodiless elemental spirit that serves Dresden as advisor, friend, and confessor.  Unlike some authors, Butcher treats the secondary characters with respect and generally so does Dresden.  Recurring in novel after novel, they add to the sense of completeness that pervades Dresden’s world.   

I mentioned the short story collections above. I think Harry Dresden really lends himself to the short story format: light and quick, and usually somewhat humerous. The short stories are in some ways even more enjoyable then the novels, especially the latter novels which grow increasing grim.

I want to mention the audiobooks. The series is read by James Marsters, who played 'Spike' on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. He does a truly masterful job, a nigh perfect match of reader and material, the only comparable voice acting I can think of is Jim Dale for the Harry Potter series (who is just ever so slightly better then Marsters). In fact, I believe the novels owe a great deal of their popularity to his masterful reading of the series, which should take nothing away from Butcher's excellent prose. 

Butcher’s magic system is obviously influenced by the ‘mana’ system of GURPS and the various magical forms found in White Wolf’s 1^st edition Storyteller system.  Though it differs from the Vancian ‘fire and forget’ system of AD&D, there is still much for AD&D game masters to glean, since Butcher pays close attention to legendary and mythical magical ideas (the description of potion brewing in the first novel is particular interesting).  Adding a further twist, technology tends to fail in random and unpredictable ways when wizards and magic are about.  This clever technique acts to limit Dresden’s power and provides amusing annoyances and obstructions.  Game master’s running a modern campaign might consider adding such a weakness to preserve game balance and introduce humor to their campaigns.     

I felt an almost instant connection with this series when I first picked it up,  so it didn't surprise me to see that Butcher lists Tolkien and Brian Daley's Han Solo trilogy as major influences, two of my favorite series as a teenager and today.  When he quotes Tolkien, he gets the quotation correct from the books!

Indeed, Jim Butcher looks and talks like just about any other gamer you might see at a con or at your friendly local game shop (check out his website, http://www.jim-butcher.com/).  He peppers his books with appropriate geek culture references and some of his characters even play role-playing games themselves (which Butcher handles more realistically than I’ve yet seen in fiction).  This only adds to the reader's enjoyment of the books. 

I love the Dresden universe, it has characters that are like old friends, foes worth fighting, and I very seldom come up against logic lapses in the writing.

The Dresden Files novels:

1. Storm Front (2000)
2. Fool Moon (2001)
3. Grave Peril (2001)
4. Summer Knight (2002)
5. Death Masks (2003)
6. Blood Rites (2004)
7. Dead Beat (2005)
8. Proven Guilty (2006)
9. White Night (2007)
10. Small Favor (2008)
11. Turn Coat (2009)
12. Changes (2010)
13. Ghost Story (2011)
14. Cold Days (2012)
15. Skin Game (2014)

Dresden Files short story anthologies

1. Side Jobs (2010)
2. Brief Cases (2018)

All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.